Adour is like Gave, a name common to many rivers in the Pyrenees, both simply meaning water in some of those primeval languages, the remains of which are still widely preserved in the appellations of rivers and mountains. The greater and noted streams, into which the others are received, has its sources in the county of Bigorre, under the Pics du Midi and d’Espade, two of the highest mountains in the chain; it passes by Campan, Bagnères, Montgaillard, and Tarbes, and begins to be navigable near Grenade, a small town in the little county of Marsan; having been joined by the Douze on its right below Tartas, it inclines to the southwest from its junction, passes Acqs, and then holds an almost southerly course to meet the Gave de Pau, which brings with its own waters those of the Gave d’Oleron, into which the Gave de Mauleon has been received. The Adour is then joined by the Bidouze, and lastly by the Nive. Formerly it made a turn to the northward, after that junction, at Boucaut, below Bayonne, and held for about six leagues a slow and winding way, parallel with the coast, before it entered the sea at Cape Breton, its direct course having apparently been obstructed by an accumulation of sand. But towards the latter part of the sixteenth century, Louis de Foix, whose water-works at Toledo were then among the wonders of machinery, and who built the lighthouse at the mouth of the Garonne, (the Smeaton and the Telford of his age,) opened the present channel, ... an arduous undertaking, in which he was more than once foiled. His intent was, by erecting a dam across the river at its curvature, to force it into a straighter line, and make it clear a way for itself through the sands: the river again and again swept away his embankments, but he, with a just confidence in his own theory, persevered in the attempt; at length, on the day of St. Simeon and St. Jude, in the year 1579, such torrents poured down from the ♦PIERRE DE MARCA. HISTOIRE DE BEARN, P. 28.♦ Pyrenees, that Bayonne was in danger of being destroyed by an inundation; the Adour took then, with its increased weight of water, a straight course, and the engineer was rewarded for all his anxieties by beholding the complete triumph of his art. The Bayonnese, however, ascribed the whole ♦THUANUS, L. 80. T. 3. P. 619.♦ merit, not to him, but to the two joint Saints of the day, and appointed a commemorative thanksgiving to be celebrated annually from that time forth upon their festival. An excellent port would now have been formed in the Adour, if the constant tendency of the sea to throw up a bar at its entrance could have been overcome. With this view the French government constructed massive stone embankments on both sides, from Boucaut to the sea; it was hoped that by thus confining the stream, its current, which at ebb tide runs about seven miles an hour, would with its own force and weight of water keep always a clear channel; but the effect was only to remove the bar somewhat farther,